the sea is watching is the fifth and final part of the Borders series. The work takes its point of departure from philosopher Catherine Malabou’s observation that “political violence more and more wears the mask of meaningless accidents.” The piece questions how we perceive—geographically, politically, and emotionally—what lies at the edge of visibility.

 

The work has been exhibited twice, at Röda Sten Konsthall in Gothenburg (2019) and at the art festival Wallstreet in Varberg (2025). In both installations, a fragile visual landscape is evoked: as large-scale prints on newsprint mounted in a way that makes them react to the slightest movement in the room or as fabric that the wind constantly keeps in motion. The circulation of air causes the prints to sway slightly - a work in constant crisis, never completely at rest.

 

The horizon, both as visual motif and conceptual anchor, plays a central role. Referencing Hito Steyerl’s notion of the collapse of linear perspective, the horizon here is fractured, disoriented. The viewer is denied a fixed vantage point. Instead, multiple perspectives emerge—overlapping, dissolving, contradicting.

 

Text is projected on the images respectivetly mounted directly on the floor - words that hover on the border between clarity and opacity, questioning the limits of language and suggesting that meaning often circulates at the edge of what can be said.

 

In this work, the border is not only a geographic or political construct, but also emotional and perceptual: a border between visibility and disappearance, between memory and forgetting, between passivity and agency. Yet, amid this dissolution, the sea is watching creates a shared space—delicate and unstable—where text, image, and viewer co-exist.

 

The work has been exhibited at Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg and is currently exhibited at the Wallstreet Art Festival in Varberg.